Redge

Most MERP campaign and adventure books have a section on stat and abilities conversion to D20 and 3d6 based games IIRC. I assume that was to support D&D and Runequest folks in the 80's.

Thanks everyone :-)

I would have liked a set of 'ready to run' linked scenarios in a modern but not futuristic setting. Failing that I'm thinking of using the setting from the S.T.A.L.K.E.R video game - http://stalker.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page and developing stats for the anomalies and artifacts.

Can anyone recommend a modern or near future setting for BRP (or derivative) rules? My group want to do some gaming with firearms.

Awesome! I run a BRP game for my three kids and they love it.

Note that there are some issues with the pregenerated wizard character in Troll Slayer. Magicians who use Magic don't memorize spells by levels, they just memorize INT/2 in spells and can cast them at a level up to INT/2 (as power points permit).

Yes I thought that looked odd. So the wizard should have more spells?

Retroquest uses +1AP for shield and +2AP for a big shield (one that can't be used on horseback).

Also, armors give AP based on material *and* cover (so a leather scale armor is 3 ap, a metal scale armor is 4 ap, a leather scale tunic is 4 ap and a metal scale tunic is 5 ap)

Ofc, hit locations are only used on major wounds.

Cool. I'll check it out.

Thanks

1 way in which BRP is not flawed is having god-like wizards dominating adventurer parties by the later parts of their earlier careers. Actually, casters could stand a little beefing up in BRP. If anyone knows some good work in this direction, please pass it on.

Good point about the 'god-like wizards'.

If you give your Magic using character high INT they'll be able to memorise plenty of spells (INT/2) and a high POW plus a staff (or some other PP holding device) will give you lots of juice. The high INT will also help with max level of each spell that you can cast (INT/2 again). Then learn broadsword to 75% (like Gandalf) and no one will mess with you ;-)

I have casters declare their spells at the start of the round, and they go off at DEX rank minus the level of the spell. If a caster is interrupted in some way before the DEX rank their spell goes off, they need to make an Idea roll or it fails.

That's what I'd hoped and I like the bit about the idea roll too :-)

Son #1 is running Troll Slayer soon for me and son #2. Happy days!

Thanks.

Page 89, Casting Time paragraph says - "Spells each cost a single DEX rank to cast per level of the magic spell and are considered to be an attack action for that combat round"

Page 189, Power Use paragraph says - "Most powers require exactly one full combat round to prepare and use, with their effects occurring at the beginning of the next combat round during the powers phase"

Does a magic user in melee get to cast one spell per combat round as page 89 seems to suggest or one spell every other combat round as page 189 seems to suggest?

Interested to here your thought.

If you don't use the optional hit locations rule another way to house rule shields so that they benefit a character in a one on one combat is to have them work like a helm does (helms add 1 point to the characters armor value). The point costs could be:

Small Shield +1 AP

Medium Shield +2 AP

Large Shield +3 AP

This feels more abstract fits in well with the core rules for hit point totals and is certainly easier in play.

Realism fans would say that not all blows hit the shield, however the same could be said for the helm +1 AP bonus which IIRC is a core rule.

Parrying heavy weapons

Since massive weapons have a great deal of momentum when swung or thrust they are correspondingly more difficult to parry with a standard weapon than when using a shield. If a character tries to use his weapon to parry a blow from a weapon of SIZ 2 or larger he must make a Difficult roll to succeed. Using a shield or dodging instead simply requires a Normal roll to succeed.

Really like this one.

I know, but I got so used to this house rule that I completely forgot that there

is this silly official BRP rule.

That's fair enough, I've ended up house ruling it to get a satisfactory result. See post #112 for the details and the maths!

Your house rule didn't affect the chances of parrying the first attack for the fighter who has a shield. That was the crucial point for me, I wanted a shield using character to be better defended than a non-shield using one, even if they were only fighting one opponent.

I also considered making shield parries Easy, since parrying with a shield is just, well, easier, right? But I think this is likely too much of a benefit and would seriously slow down some fights.

I really liked this idea initially until I consider that a 50% shield skill will always parry (a normal attack).

You others ideas are workable I think and have lead to our house rule which is this:

You can attempt to parry an attack with your weapon and if that fails you get a second chance if you have a shield. This way the chance of parrying is increased for the shield using fighter.

Those who consider two parries per attack too powerful could make the second parry (the shield one) difficult. This still gives the shield using fighter the edge over the non-shield user.

So given the fighter from the original example here's the probabilities.

sword parry   shield parry  chance of both events

pass 50%      fail 70%      35%	

pass 50%      pass 30%      15%

fail 50%      pass 30%      15%

fail 50%      fail 70%      35%

Adding up the chance from the first three (cos they all result in a parry) we see that the chance of parrying is 65%, 15% better than if the sam fighter just uses a sword.

... However, he also has his shield and his Shield

skill of 30 %, so he can use the shield to parry that second attack, with a chan-

ce that is 10 % better than the one he would now have with the sword.

Sorry but you have this wrong. As the rules are written the second parry or dodge would be at -30% making the shield parry 0%. So it would still be better to use the sword and once again the shield is of little benefit in BRP.

A warrior with 50% sword skill fighting an orc can parry successful blows with his sword using the 50% sword skill. So on average he'll be successful in parrying half of the orc's successful blows.

Now try the same situation but the warrior also has a shield with skill 30%. I can't see anywhere in the rules where the shield increases the defence (i.e. increases the chance to parry) of the warrior and yet intuition tells me that this time he should be able to parry more than half of the orc's successful blows.

Any thoughts on the above?

Possible options:

a) allow one shield parry attempt per round for those PCs and NPCs that have equipped a shield. This is in addition to the parry/dodge action.

or

Add the skills together when making the parry attempt. i.e. in the example above the parry would be at 80%. This would seem to make shields too effective.

No worries Foen, if you're like me you probably have the rule systems for 50+ RPG an table top games floating around in your head!

Thanks for everyones help on this thread.

My players are now well into the second adventure in The Trolls of Misty Mountains module and it's going great with the BRP rules with minimal work from myself except for reading the module before hand and converting the major NCPs. We rolled the players (2 of them) up at Heroic level and they're dealing the troll and orc infested mines despite been out numbered. I'd say that the BRP orcs aren't as tough going as the MERP ones though.

Thanks for your comments guys. IIRC the RAW says that you can replace the max damage of a crit with a special effect for unarmored targets which is why I used a target with 1 point armor in my example. I'm going to house rule that you can change it whether the target has armor or not and like Rosen will allow crits to ignore armor. I feel that doubling the max damage every time is a little too dangerous :-)

I think this is a small 'bug' in the RAW IMHO.

The older I get the less I'm able to keep up with technology, it seems. What kinds of things can the Google App Engine do? My on-line tools currently consist of 'Google Images' for looking up inspirational images and various foreign language translators for developing lists of NPC and place names with cultural resonance. Off-line, I use Open Office calc for my NPC stat blocks and for character sheets. I use Open Office Write for my GM notes. I use AutoCAD for maps, and Sketchup when I want to make a 3D model to illustrate a building or city. Otherwise, I have no idea what I'd use Google Apps for. Can you make a dice roller? Or even better, do you know how I can make one in Calc/Excel?

GAE is somewhere that I can host the BRP tools that I develop so that anyone with access to the Web can use them. I'll add a dice roller in there no problem.

The first tool I had in mind was one to generate stats for any of the BRP creatures. You'd be able to specify how many you wanted and it would calculate the stats based on the die ranges given.

Another idea I was interested in was something that lets you test out combat between two foes to allow you to judge how balanced an encounter might be.

I'm also toying with the idea of developing some Web based BRP tools that run on Google App Engine. What sort of thing would people like to see? I've made a start on an NCP / creature generator.

Have I got this right?

You score a Special Success with a short sword against a foe wearing 1 point of armor giving you an impale special damage. This is potentially 11 points of damage. 2 x 1D6 - 1.

Had you rolled even better and got a Critical you would only have scored 6 points of damage.

As well as not liking this seemly unfair result I don't like the fact that the 'interesting' Special Success damages (bleeding, crushing, knockback etc) are not used when you score a Critical. I think they add flavour to the combat. Would allowing them to be used for criticals unbalance the game?

Currently running the MERP module The Trolls of Misty Mountains using BRP core rules.

Currently reading the Mongoose module Blood of Orlanth, pretty impressed so far. I would run this with the BRP rules though and not the Mongoose RQ rules.

Hmm, I've read a lot of MERP modules and I'm not sure I've ever seen anything like Hard (-5) I thought that the number in brackets was just a reminder of what the penalty was at that level of difficulty.

As you say Agentorange's advice is sound and that's what I've ended up doing. I ended up using a strength test and judged hard would be around 15 or 16. So a single character may struggle with it for a couple of rounds but two or three people combining their strength should be able to shift it.

Whilst writing this it occurred to me that the average of STR and SIZ would be a better option (i.e. (STR+SIZ)/2).

When it comes to tests that map to a skill I've been using the MERP modifier as a straight penalty to the skill check. For example a Very Hard to pick lock gives a -20 to the roll.

I can't see any problem with things like spotting and disarming traps. Can't you just use the appropriate skills from BRP and use any appropriate modifers as specified in the scenario?

Regarding opening doors, I don't know.

I played MERP a very little bit around 20 years ago and have a copy of the rule book, but can't find anything about opening stuck doors. It does have a resistance table but no mention I could quickly find about using it for such things.

Hi Mechashef, I'm fine with which skills to use my point was how to convert the MERP/RM difficulty levels to BRP. There is no 'open stuck door' in either system so this becomes a strength test. In BRP we could use the STR x 5 characteristic and apply the -10 (Hard) from the MERP module as a penalty.

Hi All.

I'm currently running a MERP ready to run adventure (The Trolls of Misty Mountains) using the BRP rules and thought I'd share my thoughts on this to see if anyone else out there has tried this.

Skills: As MERP is a D100 system the skills values need no conversion.

Stats: Guidelines for 3D6 character stat conversion are provided in the front of all ICE's MERP (and Rolemaster) modules so converting the NPCs was easy enough although did take some effort.

Monsters: For monsters I've used the stats from the BRP gold book rather than try to convert them. This could unbalance the game I guess if say a BRP troll were significantly different in potency from a MERP one.

So far the game is playing very well indeed and I have to say that these old MERP modules are very detailed and of a high quality.

One thing that I haven't found an easy conversion rule for is the MERP difficulty modifiers for things like opening doors, spotting and disarming traps. etc. MERP will say a door is Hard (-10) to open whereas BRP would say the door was stuck and needs strength 20 to open which would be resolved on the resistance table. Any ideas anyone?

Hi

Anyone got the Sandy Petersen rules mentioned in this thread? I found a few links to them by Googling but they are all dead.

Hi

Your character has 60% with a a ranged weapon. Lets say its normal range is 50m. You're shooting at a target 75m away so the shot is 'difficult' and you chance to hit is reduced to 30%. OK so far?

Now if the target is prone that's also a difficult shot. So at prone targets up to 50m your chance to hit is 30%. But what about a prone target at 75m? Is that a 15% chance to hit?